How confident do people feel with their Spanish abilities after finishing the tree?

I am currently in grade 12 and have never learned Spanish before. I just started learning a week ago because I will be taking a university course in Fall 2017 for beginners Spanish. I thought that it would be a good idea to learn a bit before hand to help me out in the course.

I was just curious how confident people feel about their Spanish abilities after completing their tree. Are you able to have a conversation with Spanish speakers at this point? Also do you think it would be able to finish the tree in 3 months if I work really hard?

Thank you everyone for your help!

1 year ago

9 Comments

Three months of duolingo will certainly be a huge help for your course.

It took me 6 months to finish the tree, but my children have taken much longer (after 9 months they are yet to complete the course). Even if you do rush through the tree in 3 months, you would still be well advised to keep revising afterwards so you remember it all! It does depend how much Spanish knowledge you start with... if you listen to Spanish music and watch subtitled Spanish films you will be far ahead of someone who doesn't.

Duolingo alone is probably not sufficient preparation to have more than a very simple conversation with a Spanish speaker.

You can undoubtedly do all the lessons in a week if you work really hard. And you could learn a lot doing it, too, if you already happened to speak another Romance language reasonably well. If you've got several hours a day for the rest of summer to throw at it, you could reach level 25 before the school year starts (note: I would think you'd be better distributing your Spanish time across more resources than just Duolingo if you have that much time to spend), and you'd probably be able to quiz out of at least one semester if not two of college Spanish.

Overall, the tree probably has somewhere around half the vocab you'd need to cover everyday conversation reasonably thoroughly. There will probably come a point in your studies - perhaps beginning at more or less the point where you've mastered the tree - at which you can talk about politics and economics (owing to the overwhelming degree of cognate vocab) but can't talk about how to tie your shoes. Actually that point might last quite a long while indeed :)

I think if you do 1 hour 5 times a week in Duolingo and try to understand better the verbs after (using other resources) in three months you will be above beginners Spanish. That is the case in German which is a more difficult language. The problem with Duolingo is that you do not learn listening comprehension, you may want to do a little of Memrise official courses too and get a grammar book. You can finish the tree in three months, but that may not be the best objective, it will be better to find out the course curriculum and try to learn the contents.